bitcoin/doc/build-unix.md

UNIX BUILD NOTES

Some notes on how to build Bitcoin Core in Unix.

(For BSD specific instructions, see build-*bsd.md in this directory.)

Note

Always use absolute paths to configure and compile Bitcoin Core and the dependencies. For example, when specifying the path of the dependency:

../dist/configure --enable-cxx --disable-shared --with-pic --prefix=$BDB_PREFIX

Here BDB_PREFIX must be an absolute path - it is defined using $(pwd) which ensures the usage of the absolute path.

To Build

./autogen.sh
./configure
make # use "-j N" for N parallel jobs
make install # optional

This will build bitcoin-qt as well, if the dependencies are met.

See dependencies.md for a complete overview.

Memory Requirements

C++ compilers are memory-hungry. It is recommended to have at least 1.5 GB of memory available when compiling Bitcoin Core. On systems with less, gcc can be tuned to conserve memory with additional CXXFLAGS:

./configure CXXFLAGS="--param ggc-min-expand=1 --param ggc-min-heapsize=32768"

Alternatively, or in addition, debugging information can be skipped for compilation. The default compile flags are -g -O2, and can be changed with:

./configure CXXFLAGS="-O2"

Finally, clang (often less resource hungry) can be used instead of gcc, which is used by default:

./configure CXX=clang++ CC=clang

Linux Distribution Specific Instructions

Ubuntu & Debian

Dependency Build Instructions

Build requirements:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autotools-dev automake pkg-config bsdmainutils python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libevent-dev libboost-dev

SQLite is required for the descriptor wallet:

sudo apt install libsqlite3-dev

Berkeley DB is required for the legacy wallet. Ubuntu and Debian have their own libdb-dev and libdb++-dev packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.1 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on BerkeleyDB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure. Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

To build Bitcoin Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc, --enable-upnp-default, and --with-natpmp, --enable-natpmp-default):

sudo apt install libminiupnpc-dev libnatpmp-dev

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev

User-Space, Statically Defined Tracing (USDT) dependencies:

sudo apt install systemtap-sdt-dev

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build bitcoin-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo apt-get install libqt5gui5 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo apt install qtwayland5

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install libqrencode-dev

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a bitcoin-qt executable will be built by default.

Fedora

Dependency Build Instructions

Build requirements:

sudo dnf install gcc-c++ libtool make autoconf automake python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo dnf install libevent-devel boost-devel

SQLite is required for the descriptor wallet:

sudo dnf install sqlite-devel

Berkeley DB is required for the legacy wallet:

sudo dnf install libdb4-devel libdb4-cxx-devel

Newer Fedora releases, since Fedora 33, have only libdb-devel and libdb-cxx-devel packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.3 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on Berkeley DB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure. Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

To build Bitcoin Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc, --enable-upnp-default, and --with-natpmp, --enable-natpmp-default):

sudo dnf install miniupnpc-devel libnatpmp-devel

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo dnf install zeromq-devel

User-Space, Statically Defined Tracing (USDT) dependencies:

sudo dnf install systemtap

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build bitcoin-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo dnf install qt5-qttools-devel qt5-qtbase-devel

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo dnf install qt5-qtwayland

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo dnf install qrencode-devel

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a bitcoin-qt executable will be built by default.

Notes

The release is built with GCC and then "strip bitcoind" to strip the debug symbols, which reduces the executable size by about 90%.

miniupnpc

miniupnpc may be used for UPnP port mapping. It can be downloaded from here. UPnP support is compiled in and turned off by default. See the configure options for UPnP behavior desired:

--without-miniupnpc      No UPnP support, miniupnp not required
--disable-upnp-default   (the default) UPnP support turned off by default at runtime
--enable-upnp-default    UPnP support turned on by default at runtime

libnatpmp

libnatpmp may be used for NAT-PMP port mapping. It can be downloaded from here. NAT-PMP support is compiled in and turned off by default. See the configure options for NAT-PMP behavior desired:

--without-natpmp          No NAT-PMP support, libnatpmp not required
--disable-natpmp-default  (the default) NAT-PMP support turned off by default at runtime
--enable-natpmp-default   NAT-PMP support turned on by default at runtime

Berkeley DB

The legacy wallet uses Berkeley DB. To ensure backwards compatibility it is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. If you have to build it yourself, and don't want to use any other libraries built in depends, you can do:

make -C depends NO_BOOST=1 NO_LIBEVENT=1 NO_QT=1 NO_SQLITE=1 NO_NATPMP=1 NO_UPNP=1 NO_ZMQ=1 NO_USDT=1
...
to: /path/to/bitcoin/depends/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

and configure using the following:

export BDB_PREFIX="/path/to/bitcoin/depends/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

./configure \
    BDB_LIBS="-L${BDB_PREFIX}/lib -ldb_cxx-4.8" \
    BDB_CFLAGS="-I${BDB_PREFIX}/include"

Note: You only need Berkeley DB if the legacy wallet is enabled (see Disable-wallet mode).

Security

To help make your Bitcoin Core installation more secure by making certain attacks impossible to exploit even if a vulnerability is found, binaries are hardened by default. This can be disabled with:

Hardening Flags:

./configure --enable-hardening
./configure --disable-hardening

Hardening enables the following features:

• Position Independent Executable: Build position independent code to take advantage of Address Space Layout Randomization offered by some kernels. Attackers who can cause execution of code at an arbitrary memory location are thwarted if they don't know where anything useful is located. The stack and heap are randomly located by default, but this allows the code section to be randomly located as well.

  On an AMD64 processor where a library was not compiled with -fPIC, this will cause an error such as: "relocation R_X86_64_32 against `......' can not be used when making a shared object;"

  To test that you have built PIE executable, install scanelf, part of paxutils, and use:

    scanelf -e ./bitcoin
  

  The output should contain:

  TYPE ET_DYN

• Non-executable Stack: If the stack is executable then trivial stack-based buffer overflow exploits are possible if vulnerable buffers are found. By default, Bitcoin Core should be built with a non-executable stack, but if one of the libraries it uses asks for an executable stack or someone makes a mistake and uses a compiler extension which requires an executable stack, it will silently build an executable without the non-executable stack protection.

  To verify that the stack is non-executable after compiling use: scanelf -e ./bitcoin

  The output should contain: STK/REL/PTL RW- R-- RW-

  The STK RW- means that the stack is readable and writeable but not executable.

Disable-wallet mode

When the intention is to only run a P2P node, without a wallet, Bitcoin Core can be compiled in disable-wallet mode with:

./configure --disable-wallet

In this case there is no dependency on SQLite or Berkeley DB.

Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode using the getblocktemplate RPC call.

Additional Configure Flags

A list of additional configure flags can be displayed with:

./configure --help

Setup and Build Example: Arch Linux

This example lists the steps necessary to setup and build a command line only distribution of the latest changes on Arch Linux:

pacman --sync --needed autoconf automake boost gcc git libevent libtool make pkgconf python sqlite
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
cd bitcoin/
./autogen.sh
./configure
make check
./src/bitcoind

If you intend to work with legacy Berkeley DB wallets, see Berkeley DB section.